The taped banana - now perhaps one of the most expensive fruits ever sold - was actually bought earlier in the day for a mere $0.35, according to the New York Times.

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      42
      ·
      4 days ago

      Yo I was about to comment this.

      Like literally.

      How do you transfer a huge amount of money.

      Just get the receipient to create “art”

      Instruct receipient to sell “art” for the amount of money

      Voila, legal money laundering!

      • Gsus4@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        4 days ago

        Yeah, it’s the first thing I thought. Everybody else sees it too, right? This is well past dadaism.

        …but wasn’t this the case all along in the art market, except for institutional buyers?

      • Danquebec
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        4 days ago

        I don’t understand how buying art with 6.2 m in cash is not going to be suspicious though?

        • edric@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          4 days ago

          Because you “can’t put a price on art”. Assuming there’s a sales tax or something for the sale, it’s pretty much a legit sale.

      • dai@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Was commonplace in vanilla wow, you would see common items in the Auction House selling for silly prices - those were the players buying gold. Washing it via the auction house making it seem more legitimate.